A typical cloud computing environment may utilize a number of virtualized platforms deployed to one or more physical machines, and connected through a network such as the Internet. A virtualized environment provides the benefit of being scalable without affecting the end user. A virtualized environment can also provide high isolation between the services deployed therein, since the services run within their own virtual machine and are highly partitioned.
However, computer hardware for supporting such virtual environments can be costly. Establishing a virtual environment for developing, evaluating, testing and demonstrating services for subsequent deployment within a cloud environment can be complex and require significant investment. It would be beneficial to lower the pre-deployment cost of developing services and assemblies for use in a cloud environment, by providing the ability to develop, evaluate, test and demonstrate an assembly before committing virtualized resources. These are some examples of the types of environment in which embodiments of the invention can be used.